Archive for the ‘scripts’ Category

So, a bunch of stuff happened within the past few weeks. It’s been almost a month since I last posted.

The Diner movie, now officially known as Table For Two, went through four drafts. It is now currently on its way to the US Copyright Office so we can protect ourselves. It is also in the hands of Mike’s former internship, getting some feedback. Depending on how things go, we’re going to try to market it in some way. It would be great to sell a script. I mean, there is nothing wrong with us writing a script and doing it ourselves…but it would be a whole different ball game if we sold one to a studio. That would really help us out a lot, give us a lot of exposure, and possibly lead to other things.

I’m not saying that it’s going to happen. I’m just saying it would be great if it did.

Which brings me to some more script-related stuff.

I was talking to Dan, an old friend of mine from High School before. Way back then, I wrote another script called Something, But Not Really with another friend, Mike. It was the first script I ever wrote, and it took me forever to do it. Really…it took about two years to write it. Just back and forth, back and forth, between the two of us.

Anyway, Dan and I were talking about it, and it hit me that I didn’t have a copy of it anymore. Due to the wonders of the ‘Way Back Machine’ on the Internet, I was able to track down a copy. I had to put it into Final Draft to reformat it so it was readable by today’s standards, but I’m glad I found it again.

Aside from being god awful, it’s a pretty good read. It was my first ever attempt at screen writing, and it’s not nearly as bad as it could have been. When re-reading it, I noticed a lot of the same themes that are currently in Table For Two, which is interesting to me. It’s basically the same story, also: friends going through life.

It’s amazing to me how, in just a few short years, I’ve really evolved as a writer.

It will never see the light of day, mind you, but I’m just glad I got it back.

In other news, I had a snag in the adapting of that short story…Oh, the hell with it. It’s The Most Dangerous Game. I don’t know why I never said what it was before. Protecting my ideas? Whatever. Regardless, I’m up to the very end, and I’m completely stuck. The end of the story is fine, it works in the literary context. But on screen, it just wouldn’t play out well. I’m still pondering how to do it, but I’ll finish it soon, hopefully.

I also have another project coming up. I won’t say much now, because the agreement is being drawn up, but I’ll suffice to say that I will be adapting one of my favorite author’s short stories. I think it will be a great little short film, and I’m very excited about it. I’ll post more as soon as it’s official.

I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but I am also writing two books for Schiffer Publishing. Both are about paranormal stuff. The first is about Ocean County, and the second about Atlantic City. Should be a pretty interesting experience. Tomorrow I’m heading down to AC to interview one of the managers of The Flanders Hotel about their otherworldly occupant. I’m a bit nervous, as I’ve never done an interview like that before…but I’m also extremely excited.

Also, if you have a few moments, check out my new website, Filmophile.net. It’s a movie news website, and I just opened it a few weeks ago. It seems to be running smoothly thus far, and I even have a few people helping out with it.

I’m happy to say that it’s pretty much done. We’re going to do some grammar stuff, but aside from that, it’s complete.

Truth be told, we’re both very proud of it. So proud, actually, that we don’t think we’re going to do it. We might try to market. Mike’s going to send it off to the woman he interned for, and see what she thinks. The script is really solid, and very funny. It comes in at 117 pages, but it’s mostly snappy talking, so it would probably be around an hour and a half. We’ll see.

I started adapted that short story yesterday. About half way through. Since we’re no longer doing diner this summer, maybe we can do this instead.

Mike is two days away from handing me a new draft of the Diner Movie. When I sent him draft two, it was well over 120 pages. His job was to put his stuff in AND cut it down to about 100. He said he cut a lot of stuff (dialogue), so when I get it back we should be fairly close to done.

He also sent over the outline for the film him, me, and Luke are going to do this summer.

I’m about to read over one of my favorite short stories of all time again, and begin writing a draft for it. Thankfully, the story is in the public domain, so no rights need to be obtained for it. I’d like to do it over the summer, but more on that as it develops.

I went to a planning meeting for the Ocean County Library Film Festival tonight. It was the woman whose running it and mostly high school kids. It was sort of interesting, a lot of the organizational stuff should have been cleared up before they started accepting submissions. However, they did get a cool guest speaker for the festival itself, so it should be interesting.

Sent out a bunch more Leeds DVDs to festivals this past week. I hope we get in most of them, because it’s costing a lot to enter it.

Today, while at work, I finished the second draft of the Diner Movie. When I get home, I just have to insert it into the rest of the script, do a bit of clean up, and then send it off to Mike to see what he thinks.

He’ll probably take a crack at it at this point. I know he was writing two scenes for it before (stuff related more to him than me), so hopefully he’ll insert that stuff in. He’s working out the typed outline for the other project, the one with met with Luke about last week. I’ll probably get a copy of that within the next week.

Aside from that, there are a bunch of other projects I wanted to start working on. I finally got around to organizing my ‘Project Book.” It’s a binder with about 500 pages of information on various thing, all divided up into project categories. That way, it’s easier for me to say “Let me work on this project today,” flip to that section, and all the information is there for me. While Mike takes a pass at the Diner Script, I think I might start doing a bit more research on the Philadelphia Experiment. I’d like to have a first draft for that script by mid-February. Hell, even March would be nice. I’ll have to see.

Saturday night I sat down with Mike and our good friend Luke (from Willy P) to talk about a new film to work on. A few weeks before, Mike and Luke worked out a basic concept of the film that they wanted to do. We sat down and hammered out a basic outline for the thing, and I think it came out pretty well. Mike is going to take the first crack at the script for this one, as I’m stilling trying to hone the second draft for the Diner movie.

I can’t believe it’s Christmas eve already. Damn. It’s almost 2008.

Which, really, is a good thing. Hopefully 2008 will be a good year for us…Leeds will be in a bunch of festivals, we’ll be working on two more features, and I should be getting a job fairly close to what I really want to be doing.